8 And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the 9 sea; and the third part of the sea became blood, and the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, which had life, died, and a third part of the ships was destroyed. an hypocritical nation, and against the people of his wrath,' and He gave her 'a charge to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire in the streets. Howbeit she meant not so, neither did her heart think so!' It was not her purpose to execute the judgment of God, but only to gratify her own lust of power. 'It was in her heart to destroy and to cut off nations.' 'Wherefore it came to pass, that when the Lord had performed his whole work upon Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, he punished the stout heart of (Rome), and the glory of her high looks.' 3 Rome became the great opponent and persecutor of Christ; that great mountain which the prayer of faith was to remove, that it might be cast into the sea. And so God rendered unto this modern Babylon, and to all the inhabitants of this modern Chaldæa, ‘all their evils which they had done in Zion,' saying, with the voice of the second angel to her-and to every other nation to the end of time, which shall oppose, persecute, or corrupt the Church of Christ 3 Isai. x. 5-12. 4 St. Matt. xxi. 21. 10 And the third angel sounded, and there fell from the sky a great star burning like a torch, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the 11 springs of the waters; and the name of the star is called Wormwood; and many of the men died from the waters because they were made bitter. 'Behold, I am against thee, O destroying mountain, which destroyest all the earth; and I will stretch out my hand upon thee, and roll thee down from the rocks, and will make thee a burnt mountain.' Saying also to His people, 'The nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish: yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted.' 12 'It shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; for the day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon all the high mountains, and upon all the hills that are lifted up.' 13 10, 11. There is no poison like the infected spring. Man slakes his thirst with the sparkling waters and drinks into his inmost parts the germs of some fatal malady. It is so with the living waters of revelation and the gifts and graces of heaven. Those are the most fatal destroyers of souls who mix the wormwood of Jer. li. 24, 25. 4 St. Jude 13. 6 lies and the bitter root of unbelief or immorality with the doctrines of revealed truth. These are indeed false prophets, wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.' 4 And who among them all stands out so conspicuously as the Arabian prophet, that strange enthusiast or impostor, that 'great star burning as it were a torch' or meteor, who fell upon Eastern Christendom, distracted by heresies, turned 'the grace of God into lasciviousness, and denied our Lord Jesus Christ?'5 While the State was exhausted with the Persian war, and the Church was distracted by the Nestorian and Monophysite sects, Mahomet, with the sword in one hand and the Koran in the other, erected his throne on the ruins of Christianity and of Rome. The genius of the Arabian prophet, the manners of his nation, and the spirit of his religion, involve the causes of the decline and fall of the Eastern Empire, one of the most memorable revolutions which have impressed a new and 12 And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten and the third part of the moon and the third part of the stars, in order that the third part of them might be made dark, and that the day might not shine for a third part of it, and the night likewise. lasting character on the nations prominent on the first survey of of the globe.' ' 12. God smites the sun, the moon, and the stars in the heaven of those who will not behold their light. And so it was for many ages throughout the length and breadth of Christendom. 'All these symptoms of decay,' says a writer describing the dark ages, 6 were either the means or the consequences of hierarchical tyranny. This, at its earliest outset, spread around it the first shades of mental darkness. proportion as it advanced, the gloom deepened; and the hour of its culmination was the noon of night.' 'No circumstance is so In society during the earlier centu- Thus St. John beholds the same judgment falling upon Mediæval Christendom which Micah had threatened of old against the rulers of Israel: 'Thus saith the Lord, concerning the prophets that make my people err, that bite with their teeth, and cry, Peace. . . night shall be unto you, that ye shall 2 Heb. xii. 15. 1 Gibbon, ch. xl. 5 2 Thess. ii. 11. 3 Deut. xxix. 18. 13 And I looked, and I heard one (like) an eagle flying through the midst of the sky, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabitants of the earth, because of the remaining voices of the trumpets of the three angels who are about to sound. not have a vision, and it shall be dark unto you, that ye shall not divine; and the sun shall go down over the prophets, and the day shall be dark over them.'1 'I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day.' 2 1 Micah iii. 5, 6. 13. And what shall be the end of all this? The angel hastens to warn the seer. The voices of the angels which are yet to sound announce judgments more terrible and more far-reaching than any of those which have gone before. 2 Amos viii. 9. CHAPTER IX. 1-11 The opening of the abyss of unbelief and anarchy in consequence of the withdrawal of providential restraint from the Serpent's power. 12-21 The consequences of the Serpent's release. The four instruments of the judgment which precedes the Second Advent are set free. 1 AND the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star which had descended from heaven to the earth, and the key of 1-11. The fifth angel sounds the note of warning to Christendom, recovering somewhat suddenly from the darkness of the middle ages. Light also has its dangers for those who, in the midst of intellectual light, choose moral and spiritual darkness, rather than light. The natural result of keeping the masses of the people in ignorance of the Word of God and under the yoke of Hierarchical tyranny was to leave them an unresisting prey to Satan, and so, as it were, to release him from a state of comparative restraint. The French Revolution, and those revolutions either past or evidently yet to come, which characterise the present age of the world, are the natural result of the fierce reaction of the human mind, enlightened after a long period of darkness, against Civil and Eccle siastical tyranny. They are judicial inasmuch as they happen by the permission and moral law of God. His Providence usually restrains the madness of the people and supports governments. But, for the punishment of the great sins of ecclesiastical and civil rulers, He from time to time withdraws that restraint and withholds those supports; and then He may well be said to let Satan out of his prison, and to set free his armies of locusts and scorpions to plague all those who have not the seal of God upon their foreheads.' The French Revolution was a terrible example of the work of Satan thus, as it were, released from prison. Would to God that the state of society in Christendom could lead us to hope that it was the last! Those who witnessed the horrors of the reign of terror' |